April 16, 2024 • 56 mins
When controversial transhumanism activist and erstwhile CEO Aaron Traywick was found dead in a sensory deprivation tank on April 29th, 2018, many of his critics and colleagues suspected there was more to his death than an apparently accidental ketamine overdose. Was there foul play? Suicide? Pseudocide? Listen in to learn more about the life, times and mysterious death of Aaron Traywick.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow conspiracy realist. We are returning with an episode about
something was quite a hobby horse of ours for a while,
the concept of biohacking. Matt off Air, we were looking
through some of our files and you said.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Trey Wick, Yeah, I remember, I remember this really well.
This is around a time when maybe we were just
getting hip to it, the use of ketamine specifically as
a drug to treat PTSD and other, you know, other
mental health issues. And you know, we were also looking
(00:38):
around this time this twenty eighteen so looking at psilocybin
and other psychoactive substances that can be super helpful with
those things. And when we heard about what happened to
Aaron Treywick, or at least what allegedly maybe happened to him, right,
it was utterly fascinating. And yeah, this is this entire episode.
(01:01):
It makes you wonder, right because I don't know how
deeply we go into it, but maybe in just my
personal weird mental travels thinking about what a sensory deprivation
tank can actually do for the innerspace and then what
(01:21):
happened to Aaron, I don't know, it's weird, man.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yeah, as you know, I'm a big fan of sensory
deprivation in general, so I think this hit both of
us on a personal level. Here we are, without further ado,
from December twenty eighteen, the mysterious death of biohacker Aaron Treewick.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
They call me Ben. We are joined with our super
producer Paul Mission Control Deck, and most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. I have a question for the
table and for everyone listening to set off this episode.
Here it goes, if you could, if you could enhance
(02:30):
yourself through some sort of technological or even genetic means,
what kind of thing would you, guys choose?
Speaker 4 (02:38):
I would want to spoiler?
Speaker 1 (02:40):
You would want to spoil it like as on audible.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Yeah, yeah, so I could run faster, I would cut
down my wind resistance, so I'd wear a windbreaker and
then have my spoiler. See, I would be unstoppable.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Gotta gotta correct you here though that spoiler, and you
tell me if I'm wrong about this. But I think
that spoiler is to actually provide a tiny bit of drag,
Isn't it to push their.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
I need some downforce or I'm a running sitch and
that's what I'm looking for.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Spoiler.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Would it be mounted on like your posterior or your shoulders?
Speaker 4 (03:10):
But yes, it would be on both. Oh it would
have dual spoilers, Oh my god, because surely where one
is good, too is better?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Dude, double double good.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
That's what a lot of mods think.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Had some air vents and you're good to go.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
Yeah, what about you met?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
For me, it would be something that would enhance my
either vision or hearing capabilities. I think hearing would be
a lot of fun, especially because I've got pretty bad
hearing as of the moment due to those drums.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
You're really making me feel like I've squandered my choice.
But I should have thought of this through.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
A little more.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I guess I would want to live forever. You would
want to live forever, I mean as your horses.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah, I get okay, totally.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
They are horses live forever with the option to kill myself.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
So somehow it's always on the table.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Yeah, tell me about it.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Somehow modify your cells to not die off in some.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Way to prevent some of that inevitable decay. There's good
and bad news, right. The good news is that in
each of the things we described, we'll ask Paul off
Air in each of the attributes we described. While we
may not be able to get the full realization of
(04:21):
our wishes, we have different types of technology that can
can help us. We have the technology, to quote bionic Man,
to build, for instance, a spoiler hoodie right or spoiler slacks.
We have hearing technology that can improve someone's natural hearing.
We do have some anti aging stuff, but that's probably
(04:46):
more controversial. It's weird because we're talking today sort of
about do it yourself medicine. DIY medicine and human experimentation
has been historically speaking, one of the most controversial issues
is this realm. The controversy continues in the modern day.
Here in twenty eighteen, because recent medical innovations and breakthroughs
(05:08):
have allowed for affordable, if super risky, self experimentation, we
have officially entered the age of do it yourself biology.
There's sometimes referred to as biohacking. Next question, what the
hell is that?
Speaker 4 (05:21):
Well, this one's also interesting because the human experimentation that
we're talking about historically has often been against people's will,
and this enters this adds another angle to it. It's
almost like assisted suicide, where it's like, this is my
body do this to me? I would like to do
this to myself. So who is the onus of responsibility
on it? On the individual doing it? Are on the
people that are secretly doing this research and not going
(05:44):
through the proper channels, And we'll get to that right.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah, And so the concept of biohacking itself has to
do with any kind of activity that exploits genetic material.
This is going to be like humans in their genetic
material or animals, but in the most cases with the
DIY stuff, it's on yourself. So it's human genetic material
and you're experimenting with this stuff without regard to whatever
(06:08):
the accepted standards are, like what the FDA might say.
And this is generally done for either these kind of
self startup kind of ventures, or for just an individual,
or sometimes even for criminal purposes.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Yeah, that's what you will hear alarmist reporting. They'll say
these these crazy kids, these insane biohackers, are going to
change something about themselves or potentially in the future, something
about their unwitting victims. And this sounds like it's the
stuff of science fiction, but it is real to some degree,
(06:47):
and it's related to other discipline. You'll hear other words
described in the same conversations. There's grinding, the practice of
installing technological devices in the human body, such as magnetic sensors.
I think with talked about that on the show previously.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Right, Yeah, a lot of times you'll hear the term
what where when dealing with these things.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
And it's also related to something called nutrient genomics. If
you heard about this one.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
This one I had not.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
So it's the use of it's leveraging genetic information to
determine effects of nutrition and how the foods you intake
and the substances you intake can affect a change in
your biology. Of course, neither grinding nor nutrient genomics are
(07:33):
particularly new. People have been installing medical devices and human
bodies for decades and decades and decades. If you're listening
to this, you have probably at some point met someone
who had a pacemaker. Yeah, And on the subject in
nutrient genomics. It's really easy to say, Hey, isn't that
just you know, a diet, yeah, just like eat better?
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Or are we talking about like some of these Alex
Jones remedies you know, yeah? Whatever? Ingesting? Then at what
point does something go from the realm of food to
the realm of drugs? You know what I mean? It's
like a supplement versus a medication.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
This is something my wife has been talking with me
recently because she follows someone called the medical Medium. Who
is this guy who is I guess a nutritionist, but
he also claims the phrase medical medium. He claims to
be able to walk up to someone and basically say
what their ailments are without knowing anything about them, and.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
He guess their age and weight too.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
I'm assuming it sounds like a parlor trick.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
And a jar thing pretty much, but with like blood
and organs.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
It feels like some kind of cold reading, right, That's
what I immediately, That's what triggers in me when I
hear it. But the guy didn't. I don't know if
he invented it, but he popularized this thing that is
very similar to neutrogenomics, where it's oh, what is it
celery juice that has become I guess all the rage
in wealthy arts of America. Or you just drink celery
(09:03):
juice all day long and it's going to change your
body somehow. I don't know.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
Do they sell it at Whole Foods? Do you have
to juice it yourself?
Speaker 2 (09:09):
It was What Diana told me is that it was
sold out of Whole Foods for a while there because
this guy popularized it so hard.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
So you can't find celery anymore. There's a big run
on cellar.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
There's a run on celery deally, you would want to
juice it yourself.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
It's fresh.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Xactly did you eat? Somebody checked me on this. But
side note, it is more expensive for your body calorically
speaking to consume celery. Uh, like you're losing calories. This
is when you eat them.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
This is my belief because I've heard that too. Yeah,
I don't know if it's true.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
All right, So let us know celery fanatics in the crowd,
and if you are a celery juice enthusiast, tell us
about your nutri genomic journey. This stuff parallels closely with
a philosophy known as transhumanism, the idea that through our
own gut gumption technology and can do it. Vanis can
improve ourselves and become something that transcends the idea of
(10:05):
homo sapien.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Love it.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Yeah, it's a cool idea. It's fraught with problems. We've
talked before about the Gadiga possibility. We've talked before about how,
based on the way the world works now economically speaking,
the first people who would become truly transhuman would likely
be very, very wealthy people, or people who are transformed
(10:29):
into weapons of war. Unfortunately, that's just how how things look.
But our story today takes place in this murky world
of biohacking, of transhumanism. But this isn't exactly a dive
into the ethical complications of unsupervised self experimentation. In fact,
it's a little more true crime than tech. It's a
(10:51):
little more murder than medicine. It's time to meet Aaron Treywick.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
So.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
Aaron Treywick was born December nineteenth, nineteen eighty nine. He
was a transhumanism activist and also the CEO of a
company called Ascendance Biomedical, which aimed to make new, revolutionary
and affordable gene therapies capable of treating previously incurable afflictions
(11:21):
let's call them like herpes or HIV, things that medicine
has yet to figure out a solution for that. We
just people who have them. They live with them, you know,
for the rest.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Of their lives.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And the emphasis there is on cure yea, right, so
not treatment not treatment. So most many diseases or afflictions
have very effective treatment regimens.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
They can repress the symptoms or the consequences of a condition,
but they will not cure it, which works out great
for pharmaceutical companies. And I'm not saying that that's what
they want to happen. But you know, somebody paying you
five hundred dollars a month for the rest of their life,
that's a guaranteed income stream.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
We've kicked this old chestnut down the street many a time, right,
where it's like, does it benefit anyone that's making money
off of treatment to cure something? Are people actively holding
back said cure? I mean, it's it's a question that
we ask all the time, and I don't think we've
seen definitive proof that yes, that's definitely happening, but it
sure makes sense.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
There's definitely motivation there and it's true that drugs. Making
drugs here in the US is a labor intensive, very
very difficult process, lots of time, lots of time, not
just because it's a needle in the haystack, and the
haystack is the human body, which we still don't fully understand,
(12:48):
but also because of the bureaucratic oversight that's required, and
that comes into play here later. So Treywick was born
in DC. He lived in Alabama. He graduated with a
degree in interdisciplinary studies, which is sort of just it's
a very customizable degree, I guess is a good way
(13:10):
to put it. So interdisciplinary studies will have you encountering
your basic prerecs or your core classes, the one oh ones,
the eleven oh ones, and then branching out into stuff
that interest you more like the intersection between history and
biology or so on. Trewick had no clinical science background whatsoever,
no formal training, no research experience, and critics were quick
(13:36):
to point this out. His critics and opponents also hated
his frequent use of the C word or cure because
they felt it was essentially begging for increased scrutiny and
then possible litigation or legal action from the FDA, the
Food and Drug Administration. His first big splash into the
world of transhumanism and biohacking came about in twenty sixteen
(14:00):
when he worked with an outfit called the Global Health
Span Policy Institute, a nonprofit advocating investment in unorthodox, radical
approaches to anti aging treatments. There's a story here, and
may it may bias some of us against Treywick, but
it is important to know it's completely true. He got
(14:21):
hired because the company was run by his adoptive cousin,
a person named Edwina Rogers. She was a lobbyist, former
advisor to w Bush.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Because just really fast, because Trewick was not his given name.
He was adopted by the Trewick family.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
That is correct, Yeah, he was adopted by the Trewick family,
and he's not a blood relation to Rogers. So he
graduates from college and he calls Rogers and asks for
some career advice. She says, well, what are you interested in?
And one of the topics that came up was the
idea of life extension, just another way to package anti aging.
(14:57):
That's a passion she shared with him. And you know,
by the time you get toward the end of your
individual's story. Most people are very interested in life extension
or anti aging. She decided to start an organization dedicated
to expanding healthy human lifetimes. So she founded this GHPI,
(15:19):
and then she installed Treywick as the CEO. She also in,
you know, trying to be a good family member. She
also helped him move into the house that she and
her husband shared in Washington, d c. Three weeks into
his stay, things started to go south. Treywick told her
husband told Roger's husband, a mister Neemeyer, that after college
(15:42):
he had lived in a tantric sex house in Colorado,
and he started talking about his experience there. Mister Niemeyer
was not happy or impressed, and we have a quote
from him about his opinion of Aaron Treywick.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
He had delusions that women wanted him. He'd be talking
with them and promising them meetings with senators, and this
is outside of the quote. He also said that at
one point mister Treywick referred to the women he slept
with as my skanks.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Gross all class, all class. So Rogers realized fairly quickly
into this that Treywick was lying to both her and
her husband Treywick was intercepting professional correspondence that was meant
for Rogers, and at least once he took an airplane
ticket and a conference invitation on her behalf. So they
(16:33):
said we want you to come to this conference. He said, oh,
they must be me or I want to go. You know,
it's just a little bit of a credit hog. And
one night in late March, when Rogers' husband was out
of town, Treywick attempted to force his way into her
bedroom at two in the morning. This was one of
the last straws. Rogers fires him on July seventeenth, twenty sixteen.
(16:56):
He continues to tell people he works at the nonprofit
for about a year after and then he goes on
to found what you had mentioned earlier, nol A Sentence
Biomedical in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Yeah, that's right. And this organization had a mission and
it was quote to make cutting edge biomedical technologies available
for everyone. And there was of course a controversy from
the start. As you might imagine, Ascendance aimed to save
money by avoiding the rigor and expense of clinical trials,
those pesky clinical trials and FDA oversight that seems highly problematic,
(17:33):
doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Yeah, And again it gets back to that whole idea
of those trials. That process is crazy, crazy expensive and
also takes a ton of time. Both of those are
directly linked. And according to Treywick, he said that this
kind of getting around these regulations is not illegal. And
here's a quote.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
There are breakthroughs in the world that we can actually
bring to market in a way that wouldn't require us
to butt up against the FDA's walls, but instead to
walk around them. Oh and what they're talking about, essentially
is self experimentation. Self experimentation is strongly discouraged by agencies
like the FDA, but it's difficult for regulators to intervene
(18:18):
unless you are using a drug that is already a
schedule drug. You know, unless you're saying I want to
figure out the benefits of heroin or MDMA, they can't
really prosecute you. You know, if you say, I'm going
to live on a diet of celery juice and buttermilk
just for three months and just see what happens to
(18:40):
my body and wheat grass and wheat grass very important component,
they can't stop you because it comes to a matter
of personal liberty. Right.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
But my question is like this guy sort of casts
himself as being at the forefront of this, you know,
self discovery, self experimentation field, but it seems here that
he's almost using this as like a work around for
his company, right, so he doesn't actually have to spend
the money that it takes to do the research and
to do the I mean, you know, you can say
what you will about the FDA and all on how
(19:08):
long or you know, that approval process takes. But this
does not seem magnanimous in the way that it's being
discussed here.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Yeah, it's it's a good point. What are the true
motives versus the stated motives here? And equally important, what
did a sentence Biomedical actually do? We'll tell you after
a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
And we're back now. I think something that sets Ascendance
apart as well as Aaron Treywick is kind of the
showmanship that he had and some of the more radical
things that he was willing to do in front of
a live crowd.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
In October twenty seventeen, the company Ascendanced Biomedical shared a
live broadcast over the Internet airwaves, Facebook specifically, and it
featured Treywick and one of his colleague slash associates, a
guy named Tristan Roberts. Tristan Roberts had HIV and he
injected himself with an untested experimental gene therapy. This was
(20:19):
presented as someone saying, let's get rid of this unnecessary
red tape holding us back. Tristan in the video does say,
you know, he indicates that he has consented to this.
It is his choice, it's his body, so legally, there's
not really too much you can do about it unless
you could prove the guy was coerced. But then they
had another another similar experiment that involved Treywick himself.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Yeah, he injected himself with something that he referred to
as research compound, and in a later interview he referred
to this as a treatment and another term bound to
catch the unwanted attention of that old FDA. And it
turned out that this was, at least from everything I've read,
a herpes treatment, right, that's right, And you know, these
(21:06):
both of these actions feel very radical to me personally. Sure,
going on a live stream to inject yourself and or
your associate to inject himself with something on and it's
gene therapy of all things.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Well, that's also that's part of the strange dissonance in
the guy's character that we're talking about. He publicly compared
himself to Jonas Salk and several other like Louis Pasteur,
several other great scientists of note, great innovators of medicine,
self experimentation, though at what point does it become just
(21:42):
performance right spectacle? So it's not a surprise that he
was a controversial figure in the transhumanism or biohacking community.
His critics there were many saw him as little more
than a smooth talking showman, prone to over promising and
rushing headlong into these deadline that were just cartoonish without
(22:02):
realizing the extent of research and science that was required
to accomplish the goals. His friend Tristan Roberts, who we
mentioned earlier, put it this way. He has a great
quote about this.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
He seems to promise anything to everyone who was looking
for something. He was actually developing some of the things
he was saying he was developing. On the other hand,
it did seem like he would take any money that
people handed him with no regard for executing.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
And here's a question, let's stop for a tick here.
Why are all these people speaking of Aaron Treewick in
the past tense? Well, it's because he is dead.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
That's correct. On April twenty ninth, twenty eighteen, the body
of Aaron Treewick was discovered floating in a sensory deprivation
tank at soul Ex Float Spa in Washington, DC.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
And a century deprivation tank is a meditative, mildly therapeutic
thing where where you float with minimal clothing or nude
in a body of water or fluid salty water. Yeah,
so that so that you can float similar like dead
sea level and you are left alone with your thoughts. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
It's usually dark, quiet and just you. Your mind is
released a bit from its body.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
And some people it would cause serious anxiety. For me
being one of that, just the idea of this does
not appeal to me. But our cohort, Robert Lamb from
Stuff to Blow your Mind enjoys them and does them
que And some people say that it's almost a psychedelic
experience where you feel you see things behind your eyelids
(23:43):
and the act of the absolute lack of any sound
or sight creates these very intense kind of visions or whatever.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
And the metro ped found him right after. There was
a nine to one one call where.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
I believe the.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
I believe he was in the capsule or you know,
in the contraption for long enough. He was in there
longer than he was supposed to be, and after a
certain point, the capsule automatically drains of the fluid. Is
that correct?
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Correct? Yeah, And it's in there on purpose, just to
make sure nothing's wrong, and it also lets you know that, hey,
your session's over. Yeah, we have a whole story here.
But he was found unconscious inside this float tank and
then he was pronounced dead at eleven thirty one am
that day, So there's a bit of a story here.
(24:37):
Apparently Treywick scheduled the same day float and he scheduled
at for nine am in the morning. He showed up
about twenty twenty five minutes late. Then he got in there,
he signed the standard waiver, and then the sole ex
co owner I can't say the name, put eddruman Visiri
there you go, arrived at about ten forty nine. So
(24:59):
if it's an hour long session, he shows up about
twenty minutes late, that puts it about around twenty five
to thirty minutes after the session should be ending for Treywick,
and the co owner asks, like, why is somebody still
in this floatroom? It was scheduled for this time, there's
someone still in there. And it became pretty clear that
(25:20):
something was going wrong, and they realized that the door
to Treywick's room was a jar. And this is not
something that would generally happen when you're in one of
these sessions. Again, you want it to be quiet, you
want to be alone. Generally, someone who's going to get
in one of these gets nude or at least close
to nude, so they want a bit of privacy. The
door was a jar that they noticed that, and it
(25:41):
was strange, right, not the tank lid, but the door
to the room that has the tank in it, right,
And it's like an individual tank in each room exactly.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
The room itself was also dark. There were no lights on,
and it's those sensor lights where if someone would have
gotten out of the tank even opened the door to
the tank, probably that movement would have caused the lights
to turn on. But it was dark. And then they
opened the tank's lid and they saw him in there,
and he was unconscious. But again, like you said, Ben,
it had already been drained by that point.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Right, Yeah, So at first they said, you know, we
don't have any evidence to suggest foul play. One of
Trewick's cousins told The New York Times that police had
found ketamine in Aaron Treewick's belonging, specifically in his pockets.
This is important because of what the autopsy ascertained.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
So Bloomberg News published some details of the autopsy findings
and here's what they had to say. Aaron Trewick, for toom,
is the controversial twenty eight year old biohacker who was
found dead in this sensory derivation tank. Accidentally drowned and
he had ketamine in his system. The autopsy report that
(26:54):
was given to Bloomberg showed that that was the cause
of death, was an accidental drowning, and they kind of
vaguely blame kenemy, which is an anesthetic and it's used
for recreation. But it's not like he overdosed on the drug.
He was just under the influence of the drug and
supposedly drowned as a result of being intoxicated and not
(27:17):
having his wits about him. I suppose is that which
you guys took away from this as well.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Essentially, yes, but also it should just be noted here
while we're still in the investigation and discovery phase, that
the Metro police that discovered him said there didn't seem
to be any foul play involved in his death.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Yes, And here's where the story takes a turn. You see,
despite the findings of the autopsy that eventually emerged, despite
the statements of the police department at the time, many people,
both supporters and critics, as well as bitter rivals and enemies,
thought there was much much more to the story of
(27:58):
what really happened. In that sense, Redeprivation Tank on April
twenty ninth, and we'll dive into that after a word
from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
We have a couple of big questions here that, as
Ben said right before the break, have been posed by
everyone from his best friends to his most bitter enemies.
And the first one is did Aaron Treywick in some
way fake his death?
Speaker 4 (28:32):
Did?
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Have I ever mentioned this word on this show before?
Surely I have the technical term for when somebody fakes
their own death, say it pseudo. Side's a it's a
real thing. Pseudo. Side that's interesting is that it sounds
like it could be. But yeah, just the word pseudo
and then side sort of like regicide is death of
(28:54):
a king, fratricide, killing of a brother, right or a relation?
So did Also there's this great book called Going off
the Grid, I think playing dead, and it's about how
difficult it is to successfully commit pseudicide.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
An author we still haven't interviewed.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
No, but we have talked about We have talked with
this author about interviewing them. I'm just embarrassed to follow
up now, I.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Know how long has it been, like three years old?
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Oh man, So how are you doing? We'll ask her
about her newer books. Okay, so what happened here? We
found this in a brilliant New York Times article that
has one of my favorite quotes that doesn't really have
anything to do with this situation. David Ishi is someone
(29:44):
who was familiar with trey Wick's work. He first became
interested in genetic manipulation because he breeds dogs, and in
a quote he's referring to Treywick, he says a lot
of people want to go fast. Everybody who's new thinks
they're going to have a pet dragon in six weeks.
But biology beats you down and you realize, okay, this
is going to take way longer than I expect. I
(30:06):
just wanted to make dogs glow, you know, and that's
taken years.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
It's a real glow, like like have shiny coats.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Yeah, give them phosphor.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Yeah, that's all he wanted. That would have been incredible,
David she.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
It seems like a pretty reasonable risk.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Yeah. Well, they refer to him as a researcher who
worked at ascendants to David She, So I'm not sure
how much association he actually had. That's what the New
York Times says, you know, who knows exactly. But apparently
upon hearing this guy who's trying to make dogs glow,
heard that, you know, Trey Wick had he had died,
(30:45):
and his first thought was that perhaps he had Aaron
had somehow faked it and then run off with all
the money that he'd been given by clients. Which if
that's his first thought, it kind of tells you depending
on how closely this guy worked with Treewick, he kind
of tells you something about Treewick. And then another person,
(31:06):
Tristan Roberts, who we heard from before, said, let's see,
he was a biohacker who worked with a Sentence. He
thought the same thing. And he even says that perhaps
the body was just a very convincing clone. He joked
about it after hearing about Aaron Trewick ouch.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
And then there's the other possibility. This goes back to
that door slightly. Ajar was Aaron Treewick murdered?
Speaker 4 (31:34):
Hmm, okay, so New York Times reported that this person,
Kelly Martin, who was one of the founders of a
Sentence Biomedical, had her own theory about the whole situation,
and it hinted at a different conspiracy. And here's a quote.
There's speculation if you watch Aaron's last video, that he
was going to provide disruptive technology that would upend big pharma.
(31:58):
And also she goes on quote he said that we
were close to coming up with something that was pretty revolutionary.
It is interesting, and it seems like the kind of
claims this dude would have been known to make.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
That's the thing.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Yeah, exactly, And it's so vague, but it's big. It's huge.
It's exciting.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
I can tell you because we have a rapport.
Speaker 4 (32:19):
I mean everything we know about this guy up to
this point makes me see him as kind of like
one of these kind of fake it till you make
it tech bro startup guys, you know, who just kind
of like talk a big game and the hopes people
will throw money at them, and then they kind of
figure it out as they go along, you know. I mean,
I'm not saying he didn't have some smart ideas or
wasn't working on some interesting stuff, but I just it
(32:40):
doesn't scream, you know, integrity, integrity. Thanks. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Yeah, So let's let's play the reindeer games for a
little bit longer and say let's say, okay, what if,
just as a thought experiment, what if this was a
case of homicide.
Speaker 4 (32:56):
It is easy to.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Make someone drowned, you know, and it's not impossible to
make it look like an accident. So for people who
believe that Aaron Trewick was murdered, they will raise several
different once called them species of suspects and their motivations.
First off is the FDA. We have a quote from
(33:19):
a guy with a really cool name, Zultan istvan.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
Rultan, like the like the machine is Sultan. Yeah, wasn't
that his name wasn't he the great Zultan.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
That's amazing zultan Istvan. He's a futurist who at the
time he's quoted, he was a Libertarian candidate for the
governor of California and he was talking to the Independent,
just great paper out of the UK. I immediately thought
of an FDA conspiracy theory when I heard that Aaron
was found dead. Our medical system is not one to
(33:50):
fined cures, but to keep people alive as long as
possible while they're sick, to make money off of them.
And then Tristan Roberts had a quote that also echoes
sort of the same thing.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Yeah, he said, I have always felt that the threat
from humans profiting off the status quo was greater than
the experimental therapies themselves. So as though the outside forces
that control the current medical situation were more dangerous than
the things that were being injected into yourself on a livestream. Right,
(34:21):
so interesting.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
The idea here is the gist of it, right, is
that Treywick is too dangerous or disruptive to the existing
status quo of medicine and money. And in the case
of the FDA, the idea is that he was murdered
because he was threatening the FDA's monopoly on drug approvals
and clinical trials. And it's actually, I don't want to
(34:43):
sound insane here, but it's actually pretty difficult to get
approval for any kind of clinical trial. Back when I
was trying to buy a transcranial direct current simulation device, yeah,
you had to jump through a lot of hoops just
to even get on the phone with someone who would
sell them. And I was beating my head against this.
So I can see the appeal of biohacking. You can
(35:06):
also find some great forms online with instructions to build
your own transcranial simulation device, but nowadays, luckily well it's
still kind of gray market. You can buy one as bad.
Long term effects on your IQ though, so far as
we know.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
Are what are the positive qualities of this thing?
Speaker 1 (35:25):
It puts you in. It creates that experience of being
in the zone. You know, have you ever been, for instance,
playing music and.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
Like a flow state or something.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yeah, it puts you. It puts you in a flow state,
and it will enhance various cognitive abilities at least on
the short.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
Term, but until it rips them away from you.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Yeah, but is it a flowers for Alphere's there's not
very good publicized long term studies of the effects.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
And I imagine that would be the case. I don't know.
I mean, even with FDA trial, it seems like there's
so many medications that we don't fully understand the long, long,
long term effects of sure, even if they've gone through
the proper trial. So I would imagine with some of
these genetic enhancements or these genetic therapies or whatever, even
(36:16):
if they did fix something up front, who knows if
the problem they caused down the line maybe didn't outweigh
the positive thing they did, you.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Know, and you know big Pharm will show up later
in this podcast. But we also should make a point
that there's some corruption in those FDA trials. If p
Iiser really wants to get something through, the FDA will
probably let it happen.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
Well, I mean, with all the opiate epidemic stuf we've
been talking about, and they just now approved an opiate
that's like fifty times more potent than oxycontent or something
like that, or it was something like that. I mean,
not that number exactly, I don't quote me on that,
but it was significantly more powerful and concentrated and they're
just like, yeah, it's fine, Yeah, put it out there.
This didn't like cause us like a huge problem before.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
You know, kids are too hyper. Maybe we should just
give them, you know, opiates for children.
Speaker 4 (37:06):
Right, the opiate of the masses, right.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
The opiate of the elementary school classes. Right, you go, then,
my man, Well, uh, speaking of the FDA, right, they
refuse to comment on the conspiratorial claims. It's not a
surprise that they didn't have someone come out and say, hey, guys,
we know there's been a lot of talk about us
hunting and killing biohackers. We just want to say that specifically,
(37:33):
we didn't do Aaron Treywick because that sounds really sketchy.
So instead, one of their spokespeople pointed to a web
page that the federal agency published shortly after Tristan Roberts
injected himself with that attempt at an HIV cre.
Speaker 4 (37:51):
But the FDA does have a position on this. I mean,
you know, it's it's a little bit of kind of showmanship,
kind of an almost snake oil salesmanship as well, when
he says, oh, no, it's fine, this isn't actually illegal.
But my question at the top of the show was, Yeah,
maybe it's not illegal for an individual to try whatever
(38:11):
method of treatment they would like on theirselfs, whether it
be some kind of you know, herbal remedy or injecting
something that's given to them into their body. But at
the same time, it's illegal to take illegal drugs. So
that's obviously that argument doesn't always hold up, does it.
We can't do whatever we want with our bodies, can we? Anyway?
Point being, that's his argument is that whatever an individual
(38:31):
wants to do to their body is okay as long
as that individual gives consent for them to do it.
The FDA sees it a little differently. This is what
they say. FDA is aware that gene therapy products intended
for self administration and do it yourself products or kits
rather to produce gene therapies for self administration, are being
made available to the public the sale of these products.
(38:53):
The sale of these products is against the law. FDA
is concerned about the safe deep risks involved. Consumers are
cautioned to make sure that any gene therapy they're using
they're considering using, has either been approved by FDA or
is being studied under appropriate regulatory oversight. As we know
the whole point behind this guy's company was to avoid
(39:17):
regulatory oversight of any kind, to walk around to circumvent
it using this argument of it's my body, I'll do
what I want.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
But we know that that doesn't really hold up, and
it's not your body as soon as you start selling
it to other people exactly so it doesn't ring true.
And then there's the other specie or the related conspiracy
theory about this that concerns Big Pharma, either operating independently
or in cooperation with the FDA, and it's pretty much
(39:46):
the same thing, but they mad live it a little
and they just switch out FDA for Big Pharma. However,
there's some pretty significant problems with both of these theories.
First and for most, multiple people will say that Aaron
Treywick was much more of a glad hander in a
publicity hound than you know, someone doing the actual work.
We've all met people like this, you know. One of
(40:08):
the sayings I like to throw around is everybody wants
to eat, no one wants to cook. It's pretty calmon like.
If you've ever done group work in college, you've probably
run into a situation where there might be one person
who's just not just doesn't seem to care, you know,
but you all get graded accordingly, and your professors, I
don't know. I hope they would be understanding. But I've
(40:28):
been in like I've been in college where that kind
of stuff happens. And Treywick, according to his critics, again
this is the view of his critics, was someone who
was very anxious to take credit for things they didn't
actually do right and to short change the people, his scientists,
his contractors is Tristan Roberts and so on, and then
(40:51):
go on the publicity tours, interview circuits and what have you.
But if he was that the thing is, if the
critics are right, and if he was one of those
types of people, murdering him would not solve any of
the problems for the FDA or Big Pharma, because the
actual people doing the work and creating these genetic manipulation
(41:11):
substances would just continue to work, and they, you know,
there's a brutal but possibly valid argument that they might
do better work once trey Wick was no longer at
the top and pushing them toward these deadlines that made
them cut corners. And then secondly, I don't know, this
is something that feels weird to me about this. Why
(41:32):
would you engineer a death through ketamine? Like, couldn't you
have an accent, couldn't you have a car accident, couldn't
you have something that looks like a heart attack.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Well, in a way, this was an accidental death, right Yeah, Yeah,
at least whether there's ketamine or not, the drowning could
have occurred.
Speaker 4 (41:51):
I've heard ketamine is a pretty all encompassing, intense situation
where you feel like you're outside of your body and
it's a whole dissociative. I believe the type of drug is,
so I could imagine that it Taking it and being
submerged in a situation like that might not be the
smartest idea.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
Although I I hear that it is a common thing
to take something that would provide some form of hallucinogenic
effects while in one of.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
These sure tmt LSD.
Speaker 4 (42:18):
But that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
I've never thought that as being as that's what they
call it a K hole, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (42:25):
I don't know, I've never I've definitely never messed with
anything like that before, but i've you know, it's been
described in movies. It's a club drug in the UK.
It's very popular. People take it and go to raves
and stuff. But I don't understand how that would work
if it's a tranquilizer.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
I thought it was a horse tranquilizer.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Use for animals. Yeah, but to your to your point, Ben,
everything you've been saying here, it almost it strengthens the
idea of our third possible suspect. The arguments you're making
about his personality, how he function and within the company,
how he functioned on a work level, it does make
(43:04):
it seem like maybe it was somebody who he had wronged.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Yeah, let's say someone killed him, not because of his
talent for you know, bilking the work of others, but
for some sort of personal vendetta. Right, Let's talk about
those upset investors and or those rivals in the biohacking community.
Former business partner guy named Rich Lee noted that Treywick
had ripped off partners, ripped off researchers, and ripped off
(43:29):
the public. He also Treywick, that is, allegedly owed money
to fellow biohackers. Originally, Lee and all these partners thought
that Treywick was very professional and he was supposed to
issue them all shares or stock in a company, but
Lee says he screwed them all over. Also Lee, it's
(43:51):
a side note about Rich Lee. He originally one of
his breakthrough inventions was a piece of wet where a
vibrating penile implant called the Lovetron nine thousand, and that's
he was interacting with Treyewick in this regard. Uh wait wait,
he was interacting well sorry, sorry, sorry, in a business
(44:12):
sense regarding this invention. Treywick wanted to own seventy five
percent of the profits made from sale of the device
in exchange for providing funding, and Treywick only offered to
pay him five grand to get it off the ground,
and he said, mister Lee had to pre sell the
implant before it was finished and tested. And then, you know,
(44:35):
Lee understandably is thinking, I can't pre sell somebody an
implant for their genitalia unless I'm convinced it's both going
to happen and happen safely. Did you say the name
of the thing, love Tron nine Thousandron?
Speaker 4 (44:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (44:51):
I did.
Speaker 4 (44:51):
I love that, I love Tron, that.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
You loved Tron nine thousand of that right, So now
we go back to Tristan Roberts's original joke about faking
one's own death committing pseudo side lee, it turns out
takes this idea seriously.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
Yeah, we have a quote here it says big pharma
and government conspiracy theories started springing up after his death,
But my first instinct was that he'd faked his own
death and fled the country. Given the controversy surrounding him,
some people suspected it would have been a hit, that
another biohacker could have done it, And it does look
pretty suspicious from the outside. You'd point to a feud
(45:31):
between biohackers.
Speaker 4 (45:33):
What few we really seen like a real, you know,
tooth and nail fight between him and any other specific biohackers.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Are these people that gangster? It's a good question, that's
That's the thing. It seems more like people resented him
and seems that he many people do feel like he
stole their money essentially, or swindled them, or stole their.
Speaker 4 (45:54):
Work, or even stole their kind of cred in a
way by like being so vocal and like outspoken on
the Internet and kind of hogging the limelight in a way.
Whereas I almost want to it feels to me like
some of these communities would prefer to be a little
more underground.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
Yeah, that's true. Like how much of it is wringling brothers,
You know how much of it is sound and fury? Right.
And it's strange because after Treywick lost his shareholders or
high skidaddled with their stuff, he started going really hard
(46:31):
on his employees. He would announce these unrealistic deadlines to
the media, to the public, and then he would pressure
his researchers again, the people doing the work to cut
corners on science to meet these crazy deadlines. It sounds
a little bit like he was impulsively talking for a
reaction in the moment and promising things that couldn't happen.
(46:53):
This is also very common in politicians.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
Yeah, or a purposeful way to put pressure on his employees,
just like put it out there while I said it,
so now we gotta do it.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
This also, this deadline rush and this kind of unsustainable
growth that he was pushing for, makes Lee believe a
suicide is plausible. He says that Aaron was suing a
few friends and media outlets for defamation, but two weeks
before his death on the twenty ninth, he dropped all
(47:25):
of the lawsuits. Then he had a deadline coming up
in a couple of days, one that there was no
way in hell he was going to make. So does
this mean that maybe he hit a wall of burnout
and desperation and decided to quietly take his own life.
If so, that's tough to say because how many people
(47:45):
choose that method of self extermination.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Well, there's, okay, a couple of things really fast. I
gotta point to the fact that ketamine can take you
to that state of euphoria where perhaps if you knew
you were going to die or kill yourself, you would
not experience the pain and terror and horror of passing over.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
Like LSD with Elvis Huxley.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
But it's it's like, yeah, kind of like that where
it's been used before. I believe ketamine itself has been used.
I know several drugs have been in assisted suicide to
let people die without experiencing the existential.
Speaker 4 (48:27):
But he didn't overdose. He didn't There's nothing in his
system that indicated that he took a drug to kill himself.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
He drowned, but perhaps not to overdose, but to die
while on it. I'm just putting it.
Speaker 4 (48:38):
That's interesting. I'm just kind of being Devil's avogat here.
It's interesting concept. I would lean much more towards an
accidental drowning that's while intoxicated.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
I think that's that's where the story seems to lead us.
You know, right now people still believe that there was
something greater at play. Again, the primary thing is that
if if a large private or governmental organization was going
to remove someone from the picture for this kind of
(49:09):
genetic manipulation, it's far more likely that they would remove
the people actually doing the manipulation, actually doing the research.
They wouldn't They wouldn't need to get rid of someone
who was more of a networker and publicity person. They
would need to get rid of the scientists. And that's
(49:29):
where we're at with this story. We would love to
hear if you're listening and you're part of the biohacking community,
we'd love to hear your take.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
And I would completely agree with you, Ben, if it
wasn't for that a jar door.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
Yeah, there we go see, because.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
If he was in that sensory deprivation tank and he
drowned in that sensory deprivation tank before it was drained,
who opened that door?
Speaker 1 (49:52):
Is it possible that an employee opened it, found him
dead and said like, I'm not I'm just gonna go.
Speaker 4 (49:58):
Maybe he was just raised in a barn.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Yeah, maybe just sting clothes. But no because the person
who puts him in the tank would have to leave
the room. Yeah, exactly, So maybe they were raised in
a barnet.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (50:08):
That possible. Some part of the story was raised in
a barn.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
It's possible that there's a big barn element that we
have not considered yet.
Speaker 4 (50:16):
A man is dead, you guys, I know, I know
it is.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
It is true. The loss of human life is always
a tragedy, regardless of how how people may or may
not feel about Aaron Treywick. If you think that he
was fighting the good fight and pushing technology forward, you
can agree it's a loss. If you thought, you know,
they was more of a swindler and a credit thief,
(50:41):
then it's still a tragic thing. It's a tragic event
when someone dies. It is important to note if we're
talking about the actual medicine. This is another argument maybe
against the FDA idea. Neither the herpes nor the HIV
treatment actually worked. In fact, the guy who was self
injected to the HIV treatment. His viral load.
Speaker 4 (51:02):
Increased, I believe after the injection, and he went back
on his traditional HIV cocktail right.
Speaker 1 (51:10):
However, people in the community generally agree that love or hate,
like or dislike Aaron Treewick brought much more attention to
the transhumanist cause, even and his opponents are still seeing
bad things about the guy, even if it was just
a cautionary tale about how to not go about doing things.
(51:31):
They had two small addendums that might be of interest.
So right before his death, Aaron Trewick was planning a
crisper trial in Mexico at a place called the International
Biocare Hospital and Wellness Center, and the MIT Technology Review
followed up on this lead. They did a great job
and they found that yes there was a trial. It's
(51:51):
going to be for lung cancer. People had to pay.
Participants had to pay twenty five dollars at first to
have Aaron Trewick I guess evaluate them or interview them
to see if they were a good fit for the trial.
And the clinic confirms that they were in talks. They
did get pretty far along in the process, but they're
not going to go forward with the trial. Now that
Treywick has passed away, So is somebody attempting to stop
(52:14):
that trial specifically?
Speaker 2 (52:16):
Yeah, because it seems like, again to our earlier points,
the company could have continued along with that trial.
Speaker 1 (52:22):
Yeah, that's true, that is true. But you know, maybe
he's the lynchpin. It sounds like he was organizing a
lot of stuff. Here's the last addendum though, you guys
remember recently, I think we had talked about this a
little bit off here, maybe on our Facebook page. Here's
where it gets crazy, shameless plug the story of the
(52:44):
Chinese scientists who claimed to have made the world's first
genetically modified children.
Speaker 4 (52:49):
Yeah, also an ethical quandary, right, because he sort of
followed it actually a similar path as this story that
we're telling today, where he kind of did a lot
of this stuff outside of oversight and then present did
the findings. And I believe a YouTube video of some
kind or some kind of internet stream.
Speaker 1 (53:04):
He made an appearance at the second International Someone on
Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong.
Speaker 4 (53:09):
He did do something though, where he revealed some part
of his research online.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
I think it went viral or somethingbody they recorded him saying, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (53:17):
And I think the people in the room, though the
perspective was largely like pearl clutching and gasping is like, yeah,
what the hell like you can't do that.
Speaker 1 (53:25):
Yeah, especially when you're in a room full of scientists
who are saying, look, we're trying not to scare people.
Bro the here's the thing about that scientist. The story
just broke on December third today as we were he
is missing amid rumors of an arrest. Okay, no one
(53:46):
knows where he is, and they say he was placed
under house arrest in Shinjun after the conference, but his
former workplace says the detention claims are inaccurate. We don't
know where he is.
Speaker 2 (53:59):
Well, is this another episode?
Speaker 1 (54:02):
It very well? Maybe, but it's yeah, it's probably a
story for a different day. You know. Maybe maybe a
science was bad, maybe he got carried away, but I
don't think that's a reason for him to get disappeared.
Speaker 2 (54:13):
Yeah, maybe there's something else going on. Might have to
look into it, all right, So what do you think
you got to write to us? You gotta tell us.
Go on, here's where it gets crazy. Let's have a
discussion about this one. This feels like a good one.
Speaker 4 (54:25):
Facebook.
Speaker 2 (54:26):
It is on Facebook. Ben already plugged it really hard.
Speaker 1 (54:30):
It's a quick Plug's a smooth, smooth slide into a
segue plug.
Speaker 2 (54:36):
So so find us on Facebook or on Twitter where
we're conspiracy stuff on Instagram where a conspiracy stuff show.
If you don't want to do those things, you can
give us a call one eight three three SDD tell
you why DK. That's right, leave a message you might
get on the air. We're gonna have another one of
those pretty soon. We got to do that. And what
(54:58):
else here? We just we just want to have a
discussion about this one. Really, there's a lot of crazy
stuff going on in this in this story, and we
want to see maybe you if you've uncumbered something in
this realm, in this world where Aaron Treywick existed, that
is so murky.
Speaker 1 (55:15):
And what do you think about biohacking in general? Yeah,
that's the thing. So this is an interesting, tangentially related
thing and we'll get out of here before Michigan Control
kills us. Should it be illegal for people to use
performance enhancing drugs or technology in the world of sports?
I asked this because in the old days of baseball,
(55:37):
using a baseball glove was considered unsportsmanlike and cheating.
Speaker 4 (55:41):
Really, yeah, I didn't know that. You're just supposed to
bare knuckle it, Yes, bare knuckle it.
Speaker 2 (55:46):
Do you guys remember in the two thousands when it
was illegal to take steroids. It was a crazy time.
Speaker 1 (55:52):
It's funny.
Speaker 4 (55:52):
That's funny, Matt. I like what you did there. Hey,
if you don't want.
Speaker 2 (55:56):
To and that's the end of this classic episode. If
you have any thought or questions about this episode, you
can get into contact with us in a number of
different ways. One of the best is to give us
a call. Our number is one eight three three st DWYTK.
If you don't want to do that, you can send
us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (56:15):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (56:20):
Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow conspiracy realist. We are returning with an episode about
something was quite a hobby horse of ours for a while,
the concept of biohacking. Matt off Air, we were looking
through some of our files and you said.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Trey Wick, Yeah, I remember, I remember this really well.
This is around a time when maybe we were just
getting hip to it, the use of ketamine specifically as
a drug to treat PTSD and other, you know, other
mental health issues. And you know, we were also looking
(00:38):
around this time this twenty eighteen so looking at psilocybin
and other psychoactive substances that can be super helpful with
those things. And when we heard about what happened to
Aaron Treywick, or at least what allegedly maybe happened to him, right,
it was utterly fascinating. And yeah, this is this entire episode.
(01:01):
It makes you wonder, right because I don't know how
deeply we go into it, but maybe in just my
personal weird mental travels thinking about what a sensory deprivation
tank can actually do for the innerspace and then what
(01:21):
happened to Aaron, I don't know, it's weird, man.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yeah, as you know, I'm a big fan of sensory
deprivation in general, so I think this hit both of
us on a personal level. Here we are, without further ado,
from December twenty eighteen, the mysterious death of biohacker Aaron Treewick.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
They call me Ben. We are joined with our super
producer Paul Mission Control Deck, and most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. I have a question for the
table and for everyone listening to set off this episode.
Here it goes, if you could, if you could enhance
(02:30):
yourself through some sort of technological or even genetic means,
what kind of thing would you, guys choose?
Speaker 4 (02:38):
I would want to spoiler?
Speaker 1 (02:40):
You would want to spoil it like as on audible.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Yeah, yeah, so I could run faster, I would cut
down my wind resistance, so I'd wear a windbreaker and
then have my spoiler. See, I would be unstoppable.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Gotta gotta correct you here though that spoiler, and you
tell me if I'm wrong about this. But I think
that spoiler is to actually provide a tiny bit of drag,
Isn't it to push their.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
I need some downforce or I'm a running sitch and
that's what I'm looking for.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Spoiler.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Would it be mounted on like your posterior or your shoulders?
Speaker 4 (03:10):
But yes, it would be on both. Oh it would
have dual spoilers, Oh my god, because surely where one
is good, too is better?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Dude, double double good.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
That's what a lot of mods think.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Had some air vents and you're good to go.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
Yeah, what about you met?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
For me, it would be something that would enhance my
either vision or hearing capabilities. I think hearing would be
a lot of fun, especially because I've got pretty bad
hearing as of the moment due to those drums.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
You're really making me feel like I've squandered my choice.
But I should have thought of this through.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
A little more.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I guess I would want to live forever. You would
want to live forever, I mean as your horses.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah, I get okay, totally.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
They are horses live forever with the option to kill myself.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
So somehow it's always on the table.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Yeah, tell me about it.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Somehow modify your cells to not die off in some.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Way to prevent some of that inevitable decay. There's good
and bad news, right. The good news is that in
each of the things we described, we'll ask Paul off
Air in each of the attributes we described. While we
may not be able to get the full realization of
(04:21):
our wishes, we have different types of technology that can
can help us. We have the technology, to quote bionic Man,
to build, for instance, a spoiler hoodie right or spoiler slacks.
We have hearing technology that can improve someone's natural hearing.
We do have some anti aging stuff, but that's probably
(04:46):
more controversial. It's weird because we're talking today sort of
about do it yourself medicine. DIY medicine and human experimentation
has been historically speaking, one of the most controversial issues
is this realm. The controversy continues in the modern day.
Here in twenty eighteen, because recent medical innovations and breakthroughs
(05:08):
have allowed for affordable, if super risky, self experimentation, we
have officially entered the age of do it yourself biology.
There's sometimes referred to as biohacking. Next question, what the
hell is that?
Speaker 4 (05:21):
Well, this one's also interesting because the human experimentation that
we're talking about historically has often been against people's will,
and this enters this adds another angle to it. It's
almost like assisted suicide, where it's like, this is my
body do this to me? I would like to do
this to myself. So who is the onus of responsibility
on it? On the individual doing it? Are on the
people that are secretly doing this research and not going
(05:44):
through the proper channels, And we'll get to that right.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah, And so the concept of biohacking itself has to
do with any kind of activity that exploits genetic material.
This is going to be like humans in their genetic
material or animals, but in the most cases with the
DIY stuff, it's on yourself. So it's human genetic material
and you're experimenting with this stuff without regard to whatever
(06:08):
the accepted standards are, like what the FDA might say.
And this is generally done for either these kind of
self startup kind of ventures, or for just an individual,
or sometimes even for criminal purposes.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Yeah, that's what you will hear alarmist reporting. They'll say
these these crazy kids, these insane biohackers, are going to
change something about themselves or potentially in the future, something
about their unwitting victims. And this sounds like it's the
stuff of science fiction, but it is real to some degree,
(06:47):
and it's related to other discipline. You'll hear other words
described in the same conversations. There's grinding, the practice of
installing technological devices in the human body, such as magnetic sensors.
I think with talked about that on the show previously.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Right, Yeah, a lot of times you'll hear the term
what where when dealing with these things.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
And it's also related to something called nutrient genomics. If
you heard about this one.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
This one I had not.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
So it's the use of it's leveraging genetic information to
determine effects of nutrition and how the foods you intake
and the substances you intake can affect a change in
your biology. Of course, neither grinding nor nutrient genomics are
(07:33):
particularly new. People have been installing medical devices and human
bodies for decades and decades and decades. If you're listening
to this, you have probably at some point met someone
who had a pacemaker. Yeah, And on the subject in
nutrient genomics. It's really easy to say, Hey, isn't that
just you know, a diet, yeah, just like eat better?
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Or are we talking about like some of these Alex
Jones remedies you know, yeah? Whatever? Ingesting? Then at what
point does something go from the realm of food to
the realm of drugs? You know what I mean? It's
like a supplement versus a medication.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
This is something my wife has been talking with me
recently because she follows someone called the medical Medium. Who
is this guy who is I guess a nutritionist, but
he also claims the phrase medical medium. He claims to
be able to walk up to someone and basically say
what their ailments are without knowing anything about them, and.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
He guess their age and weight too.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
I'm assuming it sounds like a parlor trick.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
And a jar thing pretty much, but with like blood
and organs.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
It feels like some kind of cold reading, right, That's
what I immediately, That's what triggers in me when I
hear it. But the guy didn't. I don't know if
he invented it, but he popularized this thing that is
very similar to neutrogenomics, where it's oh, what is it
celery juice that has become I guess all the rage
in wealthy arts of America. Or you just drink celery
(09:03):
juice all day long and it's going to change your
body somehow. I don't know.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
Do they sell it at Whole Foods? Do you have
to juice it yourself?
Speaker 2 (09:09):
It was What Diana told me is that it was
sold out of Whole Foods for a while there because
this guy popularized it so hard.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
So you can't find celery anymore. There's a big run
on cellar.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
There's a run on celery deally, you would want to
juice it yourself.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
It's fresh.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Xactly did you eat? Somebody checked me on this. But
side note, it is more expensive for your body calorically
speaking to consume celery. Uh, like you're losing calories. This
is when you eat them.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
This is my belief because I've heard that too. Yeah,
I don't know if it's true.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
All right, So let us know celery fanatics in the crowd,
and if you are a celery juice enthusiast, tell us
about your nutri genomic journey. This stuff parallels closely with
a philosophy known as transhumanism, the idea that through our
own gut gumption technology and can do it. Vanis can
improve ourselves and become something that transcends the idea of
(10:05):
homo sapien.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Love it.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Yeah, it's a cool idea. It's fraught with problems. We've
talked before about the Gadiga possibility. We've talked before about how,
based on the way the world works now economically speaking,
the first people who would become truly transhuman would likely
be very, very wealthy people, or people who are transformed
(10:29):
into weapons of war. Unfortunately, that's just how how things look.
But our story today takes place in this murky world
of biohacking, of transhumanism. But this isn't exactly a dive
into the ethical complications of unsupervised self experimentation. In fact,
it's a little more true crime than tech. It's a
(10:51):
little more murder than medicine. It's time to meet Aaron Treywick.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
So.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
Aaron Treywick was born December nineteenth, nineteen eighty nine. He
was a transhumanism activist and also the CEO of a
company called Ascendance Biomedical, which aimed to make new, revolutionary
and affordable gene therapies capable of treating previously incurable afflictions
(11:21):
let's call them like herpes or HIV, things that medicine
has yet to figure out a solution for that. We
just people who have them. They live with them, you know,
for the rest.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Of their lives.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And the emphasis there is on cure yea, right, so
not treatment not treatment. So most many diseases or afflictions
have very effective treatment regimens.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
They can repress the symptoms or the consequences of a condition,
but they will not cure it, which works out great
for pharmaceutical companies. And I'm not saying that that's what
they want to happen. But you know, somebody paying you
five hundred dollars a month for the rest of their life,
that's a guaranteed income stream.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
We've kicked this old chestnut down the street many a time, right,
where it's like, does it benefit anyone that's making money
off of treatment to cure something? Are people actively holding
back said cure? I mean, it's it's a question that
we ask all the time, and I don't think we've
seen definitive proof that yes, that's definitely happening, but it
sure makes sense.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
There's definitely motivation there and it's true that drugs. Making
drugs here in the US is a labor intensive, very
very difficult process, lots of time, lots of time, not
just because it's a needle in the haystack, and the
haystack is the human body, which we still don't fully understand,
(12:48):
but also because of the bureaucratic oversight that's required, and
that comes into play here later. So Treywick was born
in DC. He lived in Alabama. He graduated with a
degree in interdisciplinary studies, which is sort of just it's
a very customizable degree, I guess is a good way
(13:10):
to put it. So interdisciplinary studies will have you encountering
your basic prerecs or your core classes, the one oh ones,
the eleven oh ones, and then branching out into stuff
that interest you more like the intersection between history and
biology or so on. Trewick had no clinical science background whatsoever,
no formal training, no research experience, and critics were quick
(13:36):
to point this out. His critics and opponents also hated
his frequent use of the C word or cure because
they felt it was essentially begging for increased scrutiny and
then possible litigation or legal action from the FDA, the
Food and Drug Administration. His first big splash into the
world of transhumanism and biohacking came about in twenty sixteen
(14:00):
when he worked with an outfit called the Global Health
Span Policy Institute, a nonprofit advocating investment in unorthodox, radical
approaches to anti aging treatments. There's a story here, and
may it may bias some of us against Treywick, but
it is important to know it's completely true. He got
(14:21):
hired because the company was run by his adoptive cousin,
a person named Edwina Rogers. She was a lobbyist, former
advisor to w Bush.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Because just really fast, because Trewick was not his given name.
He was adopted by the Trewick family.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
That is correct, Yeah, he was adopted by the Trewick family,
and he's not a blood relation to Rogers. So he
graduates from college and he calls Rogers and asks for
some career advice. She says, well, what are you interested in?
And one of the topics that came up was the
idea of life extension, just another way to package anti aging.
(14:57):
That's a passion she shared with him. And you know,
by the time you get toward the end of your
individual's story. Most people are very interested in life extension
or anti aging. She decided to start an organization dedicated
to expanding healthy human lifetimes. So she founded this GHPI,
(15:19):
and then she installed Treywick as the CEO. She also in,
you know, trying to be a good family member. She
also helped him move into the house that she and
her husband shared in Washington, d c. Three weeks into
his stay, things started to go south. Treywick told her
husband told Roger's husband, a mister Neemeyer, that after college
(15:42):
he had lived in a tantric sex house in Colorado,
and he started talking about his experience there. Mister Niemeyer
was not happy or impressed, and we have a quote
from him about his opinion of Aaron Treywick.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
He had delusions that women wanted him. He'd be talking
with them and promising them meetings with senators, and this
is outside of the quote. He also said that at
one point mister Treywick referred to the women he slept
with as my skanks.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Gross all class, all class. So Rogers realized fairly quickly
into this that Treywick was lying to both her and
her husband Treywick was intercepting professional correspondence that was meant
for Rogers, and at least once he took an airplane
ticket and a conference invitation on her behalf. So they
(16:33):
said we want you to come to this conference. He said, oh,
they must be me or I want to go. You know,
it's just a little bit of a credit hog. And
one night in late March, when Rogers' husband was out
of town, Treywick attempted to force his way into her
bedroom at two in the morning. This was one of
the last straws. Rogers fires him on July seventeenth, twenty sixteen.
(16:56):
He continues to tell people he works at the nonprofit
for about a year after and then he goes on
to found what you had mentioned earlier, nol A Sentence
Biomedical in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Yeah, that's right. And this organization had a mission and
it was quote to make cutting edge biomedical technologies available
for everyone. And there was of course a controversy from
the start. As you might imagine, Ascendance aimed to save
money by avoiding the rigor and expense of clinical trials,
those pesky clinical trials and FDA oversight that seems highly problematic,
(17:33):
doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Yeah, And again it gets back to that whole idea
of those trials. That process is crazy, crazy expensive and
also takes a ton of time. Both of those are
directly linked. And according to Treywick, he said that this
kind of getting around these regulations is not illegal. And
here's a quote.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
There are breakthroughs in the world that we can actually
bring to market in a way that wouldn't require us
to butt up against the FDA's walls, but instead to
walk around them. Oh and what they're talking about, essentially
is self experimentation. Self experimentation is strongly discouraged by agencies
like the FDA, but it's difficult for regulators to intervene
(18:18):
unless you are using a drug that is already a
schedule drug. You know, unless you're saying I want to
figure out the benefits of heroin or MDMA, they can't
really prosecute you. You know, if you say, I'm going
to live on a diet of celery juice and buttermilk
just for three months and just see what happens to
(18:40):
my body and wheat grass and wheat grass very important component,
they can't stop you because it comes to a matter
of personal liberty. Right.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
But my question is like this guy sort of casts
himself as being at the forefront of this, you know,
self discovery, self experimentation field, but it seems here that
he's almost using this as like a work around for
his company, right, so he doesn't actually have to spend
the money that it takes to do the research and
to do the I mean, you know, you can say
what you will about the FDA and all on how
(19:08):
long or you know, that approval process takes. But this
does not seem magnanimous in the way that it's being
discussed here.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Yeah, it's it's a good point. What are the true
motives versus the stated motives here? And equally important, what
did a sentence Biomedical actually do? We'll tell you after
a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
And we're back now. I think something that sets Ascendance
apart as well as Aaron Treywick is kind of the
showmanship that he had and some of the more radical
things that he was willing to do in front of
a live crowd.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
In October twenty seventeen, the company Ascendanced Biomedical shared a
live broadcast over the Internet airwaves, Facebook specifically, and it
featured Treywick and one of his colleague slash associates, a
guy named Tristan Roberts. Tristan Roberts had HIV and he
injected himself with an untested experimental gene therapy. This was
(20:19):
presented as someone saying, let's get rid of this unnecessary
red tape holding us back. Tristan in the video does say,
you know, he indicates that he has consented to this.
It is his choice, it's his body, so legally, there's
not really too much you can do about it unless
you could prove the guy was coerced. But then they
had another another similar experiment that involved Treywick himself.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Yeah, he injected himself with something that he referred to
as research compound, and in a later interview he referred
to this as a treatment and another term bound to
catch the unwanted attention of that old FDA. And it
turned out that this was, at least from everything I've read,
a herpes treatment, right, that's right, And you know, these
(21:06):
both of these actions feel very radical to me personally. Sure,
going on a live stream to inject yourself and or
your associate to inject himself with something on and it's
gene therapy of all things.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Well, that's also that's part of the strange dissonance in
the guy's character that we're talking about. He publicly compared
himself to Jonas Salk and several other like Louis Pasteur,
several other great scientists of note, great innovators of medicine,
self experimentation, though at what point does it become just
(21:42):
performance right spectacle? So it's not a surprise that he
was a controversial figure in the transhumanism or biohacking community.
His critics there were many saw him as little more
than a smooth talking showman, prone to over promising and
rushing headlong into these deadline that were just cartoonish without
(22:02):
realizing the extent of research and science that was required
to accomplish the goals. His friend Tristan Roberts, who we
mentioned earlier, put it this way. He has a great
quote about this.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
He seems to promise anything to everyone who was looking
for something. He was actually developing some of the things
he was saying he was developing. On the other hand,
it did seem like he would take any money that
people handed him with no regard for executing.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
And here's a question, let's stop for a tick here.
Why are all these people speaking of Aaron Treewick in
the past tense? Well, it's because he is dead.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
That's correct. On April twenty ninth, twenty eighteen, the body
of Aaron Treewick was discovered floating in a sensory deprivation
tank at soul Ex Float Spa in Washington, DC.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
And a century deprivation tank is a meditative, mildly therapeutic
thing where where you float with minimal clothing or nude
in a body of water or fluid salty water. Yeah,
so that so that you can float similar like dead
sea level and you are left alone with your thoughts. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
It's usually dark, quiet and just you. Your mind is
released a bit from its body.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
And some people it would cause serious anxiety. For me
being one of that, just the idea of this does
not appeal to me. But our cohort, Robert Lamb from
Stuff to Blow your Mind enjoys them and does them
que And some people say that it's almost a psychedelic
experience where you feel you see things behind your eyelids
(23:43):
and the act of the absolute lack of any sound
or sight creates these very intense kind of visions or whatever.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
And the metro ped found him right after. There was
a nine to one one call where.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
I believe the.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
I believe he was in the capsule or you know,
in the contraption for long enough. He was in there
longer than he was supposed to be, and after a
certain point, the capsule automatically drains of the fluid. Is
that correct?
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Correct? Yeah, And it's in there on purpose, just to
make sure nothing's wrong, and it also lets you know that, hey,
your session's over. Yeah, we have a whole story here.
But he was found unconscious inside this float tank and
then he was pronounced dead at eleven thirty one am
that day, So there's a bit of a story here.
(24:37):
Apparently Treywick scheduled the same day float and he scheduled
at for nine am in the morning. He showed up
about twenty twenty five minutes late. Then he got in there,
he signed the standard waiver, and then the sole ex
co owner I can't say the name, put eddruman Visiri
there you go, arrived at about ten forty nine. So
(24:59):
if it's an hour long session, he shows up about
twenty minutes late, that puts it about around twenty five
to thirty minutes after the session should be ending for Treywick,
and the co owner asks, like, why is somebody still
in this floatroom? It was scheduled for this time, there's
someone still in there. And it became pretty clear that
(25:20):
something was going wrong, and they realized that the door
to Treywick's room was a jar. And this is not
something that would generally happen when you're in one of
these sessions. Again, you want it to be quiet, you
want to be alone. Generally, someone who's going to get
in one of these gets nude or at least close
to nude, so they want a bit of privacy. The
door was a jar that they noticed that, and it
(25:41):
was strange, right, not the tank lid, but the door
to the room that has the tank in it, right,
And it's like an individual tank in each room exactly.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
The room itself was also dark. There were no lights on,
and it's those sensor lights where if someone would have
gotten out of the tank even opened the door to
the tank, probably that movement would have caused the lights
to turn on. But it was dark. And then they
opened the tank's lid and they saw him in there,
and he was unconscious. But again, like you said, Ben,
it had already been drained by that point.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Right, Yeah, So at first they said, you know, we
don't have any evidence to suggest foul play. One of
Trewick's cousins told The New York Times that police had
found ketamine in Aaron Treewick's belonging, specifically in his pockets.
This is important because of what the autopsy ascertained.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
So Bloomberg News published some details of the autopsy findings
and here's what they had to say. Aaron Trewick, for toom,
is the controversial twenty eight year old biohacker who was
found dead in this sensory derivation tank. Accidentally drowned and
he had ketamine in his system. The autopsy report that
(26:54):
was given to Bloomberg showed that that was the cause
of death, was an accidental drowning, and they kind of
vaguely blame kenemy, which is an anesthetic and it's used
for recreation. But it's not like he overdosed on the drug.
He was just under the influence of the drug and
supposedly drowned as a result of being intoxicated and not
(27:17):
having his wits about him. I suppose is that which
you guys took away from this as well.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Essentially, yes, but also it should just be noted here
while we're still in the investigation and discovery phase, that
the Metro police that discovered him said there didn't seem
to be any foul play involved in his death.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Yes, And here's where the story takes a turn. You see,
despite the findings of the autopsy that eventually emerged, despite
the statements of the police department at the time, many people,
both supporters and critics, as well as bitter rivals and enemies,
thought there was much much more to the story of
(27:58):
what really happened. In that sense, Redeprivation Tank on April
twenty ninth, and we'll dive into that after a word
from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
We have a couple of big questions here that, as
Ben said right before the break, have been posed by
everyone from his best friends to his most bitter enemies.
And the first one is did Aaron Treywick in some
way fake his death?
Speaker 4 (28:32):
Did?
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Have I ever mentioned this word on this show before?
Surely I have the technical term for when somebody fakes
their own death, say it pseudo. Side's a it's a
real thing. Pseudo. Side that's interesting is that it sounds
like it could be. But yeah, just the word pseudo
and then side sort of like regicide is death of
(28:54):
a king, fratricide, killing of a brother, right or a relation?
So did Also there's this great book called Going off
the Grid, I think playing dead, and it's about how
difficult it is to successfully commit pseudicide.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
An author we still haven't interviewed.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
No, but we have talked about We have talked with
this author about interviewing them. I'm just embarrassed to follow
up now, I.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Know how long has it been, like three years old?
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Oh man, So how are you doing? We'll ask her
about her newer books. Okay, so what happened here? We
found this in a brilliant New York Times article that
has one of my favorite quotes that doesn't really have
anything to do with this situation. David Ishi is someone
(29:44):
who was familiar with trey Wick's work. He first became
interested in genetic manipulation because he breeds dogs, and in
a quote he's referring to Treywick, he says a lot
of people want to go fast. Everybody who's new thinks
they're going to have a pet dragon in six weeks.
But biology beats you down and you realize, okay, this
is going to take way longer than I expect. I
(30:06):
just wanted to make dogs glow, you know, and that's
taken years.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
It's a real glow, like like have shiny coats.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Yeah, give them phosphor.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Yeah, that's all he wanted. That would have been incredible,
David she.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
It seems like a pretty reasonable risk.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Yeah. Well, they refer to him as a researcher who
worked at ascendants to David She, So I'm not sure
how much association he actually had. That's what the New
York Times says, you know, who knows exactly. But apparently
upon hearing this guy who's trying to make dogs glow,
heard that, you know, Trey Wick had he had died,
(30:45):
and his first thought was that perhaps he had Aaron
had somehow faked it and then run off with all
the money that he'd been given by clients. Which if
that's his first thought, it kind of tells you depending
on how closely this guy worked with Treewick, he kind
of tells you something about Treewick. And then another person,
(31:06):
Tristan Roberts, who we heard from before, said, let's see,
he was a biohacker who worked with a Sentence. He
thought the same thing. And he even says that perhaps
the body was just a very convincing clone. He joked
about it after hearing about Aaron Trewick ouch.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
And then there's the other possibility. This goes back to
that door slightly. Ajar was Aaron Treewick murdered?
Speaker 4 (31:34):
Hmm, okay, so New York Times reported that this person,
Kelly Martin, who was one of the founders of a
Sentence Biomedical, had her own theory about the whole situation,
and it hinted at a different conspiracy. And here's a quote.
There's speculation if you watch Aaron's last video, that he
was going to provide disruptive technology that would upend big pharma.
(31:58):
And also she goes on quote he said that we
were close to coming up with something that was pretty revolutionary.
It is interesting, and it seems like the kind of
claims this dude would have been known to make.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
That's the thing.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Yeah, exactly, And it's so vague, but it's big. It's huge.
It's exciting.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
I can tell you because we have a rapport.
Speaker 4 (32:19):
I mean everything we know about this guy up to
this point makes me see him as kind of like
one of these kind of fake it till you make
it tech bro startup guys, you know, who just kind
of like talk a big game and the hopes people
will throw money at them, and then they kind of
figure it out as they go along, you know. I mean,
I'm not saying he didn't have some smart ideas or
wasn't working on some interesting stuff, but I just it
(32:40):
doesn't scream, you know, integrity, integrity. Thanks. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Yeah, So let's let's play the reindeer games for a
little bit longer and say let's say, okay, what if,
just as a thought experiment, what if this was a
case of homicide.
Speaker 4 (32:56):
It is easy to.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Make someone drowned, you know, and it's not impossible to
make it look like an accident. So for people who
believe that Aaron Trewick was murdered, they will raise several
different once called them species of suspects and their motivations.
First off is the FDA. We have a quote from
(33:19):
a guy with a really cool name, Zultan istvan.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
Rultan, like the like the machine is Sultan. Yeah, wasn't
that his name wasn't he the great Zultan.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
That's amazing zultan Istvan. He's a futurist who at the
time he's quoted, he was a Libertarian candidate for the
governor of California and he was talking to the Independent,
just great paper out of the UK. I immediately thought
of an FDA conspiracy theory when I heard that Aaron
was found dead. Our medical system is not one to
(33:50):
fined cures, but to keep people alive as long as
possible while they're sick, to make money off of them.
And then Tristan Roberts had a quote that also echoes
sort of the same thing.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Yeah, he said, I have always felt that the threat
from humans profiting off the status quo was greater than
the experimental therapies themselves. So as though the outside forces
that control the current medical situation were more dangerous than
the things that were being injected into yourself on a livestream. Right,
(34:21):
so interesting.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
The idea here is the gist of it, right, is
that Treywick is too dangerous or disruptive to the existing
status quo of medicine and money. And in the case
of the FDA, the idea is that he was murdered
because he was threatening the FDA's monopoly on drug approvals
and clinical trials. And it's actually, I don't want to
(34:43):
sound insane here, but it's actually pretty difficult to get
approval for any kind of clinical trial. Back when I
was trying to buy a transcranial direct current simulation device, yeah,
you had to jump through a lot of hoops just
to even get on the phone with someone who would
sell them. And I was beating my head against this.
So I can see the appeal of biohacking. You can
(35:06):
also find some great forms online with instructions to build
your own transcranial simulation device, but nowadays, luckily well it's
still kind of gray market. You can buy one as bad.
Long term effects on your IQ though, so far as
we know.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
Are what are the positive qualities of this thing?
Speaker 1 (35:25):
It puts you in. It creates that experience of being
in the zone. You know, have you ever been, for instance,
playing music and.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
Like a flow state or something.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yeah, it puts you. It puts you in a flow state,
and it will enhance various cognitive abilities at least on
the short.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
Term, but until it rips them away from you.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Yeah, but is it a flowers for Alphere's there's not
very good publicized long term studies of the effects.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
And I imagine that would be the case. I don't know.
I mean, even with FDA trial, it seems like there's
so many medications that we don't fully understand the long, long,
long term effects of sure, even if they've gone through
the proper trial. So I would imagine with some of
these genetic enhancements or these genetic therapies or whatever, even
(36:16):
if they did fix something up front, who knows if
the problem they caused down the line maybe didn't outweigh
the positive thing they did, you.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Know, and you know big Pharm will show up later
in this podcast. But we also should make a point
that there's some corruption in those FDA trials. If p
Iiser really wants to get something through, the FDA will
probably let it happen.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
Well, I mean, with all the opiate epidemic stuf we've
been talking about, and they just now approved an opiate
that's like fifty times more potent than oxycontent or something
like that, or it was something like that. I mean,
not that number exactly, I don't quote me on that,
but it was significantly more powerful and concentrated and they're
just like, yeah, it's fine, Yeah, put it out there.
This didn't like cause us like a huge problem before.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
You know, kids are too hyper. Maybe we should just
give them, you know, opiates for children.
Speaker 4 (37:06):
Right, the opiate of the masses, right.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
The opiate of the elementary school classes. Right, you go, then,
my man, Well, uh, speaking of the FDA, right, they
refuse to comment on the conspiratorial claims. It's not a
surprise that they didn't have someone come out and say, hey, guys,
we know there's been a lot of talk about us
hunting and killing biohackers. We just want to say that specifically,
(37:33):
we didn't do Aaron Treywick because that sounds really sketchy.
So instead, one of their spokespeople pointed to a web
page that the federal agency published shortly after Tristan Roberts
injected himself with that attempt at an HIV cre.
Speaker 4 (37:51):
But the FDA does have a position on this. I mean,
you know, it's it's a little bit of kind of showmanship,
kind of an almost snake oil salesmanship as well, when
he says, oh, no, it's fine, this isn't actually illegal.
But my question at the top of the show was, Yeah,
maybe it's not illegal for an individual to try whatever
(38:11):
method of treatment they would like on theirselfs, whether it
be some kind of you know, herbal remedy or injecting
something that's given to them into their body. But at
the same time, it's illegal to take illegal drugs. So
that's obviously that argument doesn't always hold up, does it.
We can't do whatever we want with our bodies, can we? Anyway?
Point being, that's his argument is that whatever an individual
(38:31):
wants to do to their body is okay as long
as that individual gives consent for them to do it.
The FDA sees it a little differently. This is what
they say. FDA is aware that gene therapy products intended
for self administration and do it yourself products or kits
rather to produce gene therapies for self administration, are being
made available to the public the sale of these products.
(38:53):
The sale of these products is against the law. FDA
is concerned about the safe deep risks involved. Consumers are
cautioned to make sure that any gene therapy they're using
they're considering using, has either been approved by FDA or
is being studied under appropriate regulatory oversight. As we know
the whole point behind this guy's company was to avoid
(39:17):
regulatory oversight of any kind, to walk around to circumvent
it using this argument of it's my body, I'll do
what I want.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
But we know that that doesn't really hold up, and
it's not your body as soon as you start selling
it to other people exactly so it doesn't ring true.
And then there's the other specie or the related conspiracy
theory about this that concerns Big Pharma, either operating independently
or in cooperation with the FDA, and it's pretty much
(39:46):
the same thing, but they mad live it a little
and they just switch out FDA for Big Pharma. However,
there's some pretty significant problems with both of these theories.
First and for most, multiple people will say that Aaron
Treywick was much more of a glad hander in a
publicity hound than you know, someone doing the actual work.
We've all met people like this, you know. One of
(40:08):
the sayings I like to throw around is everybody wants
to eat, no one wants to cook. It's pretty calmon like.
If you've ever done group work in college, you've probably
run into a situation where there might be one person
who's just not just doesn't seem to care, you know,
but you all get graded accordingly, and your professors, I
don't know. I hope they would be understanding. But I've
(40:28):
been in like I've been in college where that kind
of stuff happens. And Treywick, according to his critics, again
this is the view of his critics, was someone who
was very anxious to take credit for things they didn't
actually do right and to short change the people, his scientists,
his contractors is Tristan Roberts and so on, and then
(40:51):
go on the publicity tours, interview circuits and what have you.
But if he was that the thing is, if the
critics are right, and if he was one of those
types of people, murdering him would not solve any of
the problems for the FDA or Big Pharma, because the
actual people doing the work and creating these genetic manipulation
(41:11):
substances would just continue to work, and they, you know,
there's a brutal but possibly valid argument that they might
do better work once trey Wick was no longer at
the top and pushing them toward these deadlines that made
them cut corners. And then secondly, I don't know, this
is something that feels weird to me about this. Why
(41:32):
would you engineer a death through ketamine? Like, couldn't you
have an accent, couldn't you have a car accident, couldn't
you have something that looks like a heart attack.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Well, in a way, this was an accidental death, right Yeah, Yeah,
at least whether there's ketamine or not, the drowning could
have occurred.
Speaker 4 (41:51):
I've heard ketamine is a pretty all encompassing, intense situation
where you feel like you're outside of your body and
it's a whole dissociative. I believe the type of drug is,
so I could imagine that it Taking it and being
submerged in a situation like that might not be the
smartest idea.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
Although I I hear that it is a common thing
to take something that would provide some form of hallucinogenic
effects while in one of.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
These sure tmt LSD.
Speaker 4 (42:18):
But that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
I've never thought that as being as that's what they
call it a K hole, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (42:25):
I don't know, I've never I've definitely never messed with
anything like that before, but i've you know, it's been
described in movies. It's a club drug in the UK.
It's very popular. People take it and go to raves
and stuff. But I don't understand how that would work
if it's a tranquilizer.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
I thought it was a horse tranquilizer.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Use for animals. Yeah, but to your to your point, Ben,
everything you've been saying here, it almost it strengthens the
idea of our third possible suspect. The arguments you're making
about his personality, how he function and within the company,
how he functioned on a work level, it does make
(43:04):
it seem like maybe it was somebody who he had wronged.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Yeah, let's say someone killed him, not because of his
talent for you know, bilking the work of others, but
for some sort of personal vendetta. Right, Let's talk about
those upset investors and or those rivals in the biohacking community.
Former business partner guy named Rich Lee noted that Treywick
had ripped off partners, ripped off researchers, and ripped off
(43:29):
the public. He also Treywick, that is, allegedly owed money
to fellow biohackers. Originally, Lee and all these partners thought
that Treywick was very professional and he was supposed to
issue them all shares or stock in a company, but
Lee says he screwed them all over. Also Lee, it's
(43:51):
a side note about Rich Lee. He originally one of
his breakthrough inventions was a piece of wet where a
vibrating penile implant called the Lovetron nine thousand, and that's
he was interacting with Treyewick in this regard. Uh wait wait,
he was interacting well sorry, sorry, sorry, in a business
(44:12):
sense regarding this invention. Treywick wanted to own seventy five
percent of the profits made from sale of the device
in exchange for providing funding, and Treywick only offered to
pay him five grand to get it off the ground,
and he said, mister Lee had to pre sell the
implant before it was finished and tested. And then, you know,
(44:35):
Lee understandably is thinking, I can't pre sell somebody an
implant for their genitalia unless I'm convinced it's both going
to happen and happen safely. Did you say the name
of the thing, love Tron nine Thousandron?
Speaker 4 (44:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (44:51):
I did.
Speaker 4 (44:51):
I love that, I love Tron, that.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
You loved Tron nine thousand of that right, So now
we go back to Tristan Roberts's original joke about faking
one's own death committing pseudo side lee, it turns out
takes this idea seriously.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
Yeah, we have a quote here it says big pharma
and government conspiracy theories started springing up after his death,
But my first instinct was that he'd faked his own
death and fled the country. Given the controversy surrounding him,
some people suspected it would have been a hit, that
another biohacker could have done it, And it does look
pretty suspicious from the outside. You'd point to a feud
(45:31):
between biohackers.
Speaker 4 (45:33):
What few we really seen like a real, you know,
tooth and nail fight between him and any other specific biohackers.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Are these people that gangster? It's a good question, that's
That's the thing. It seems more like people resented him
and seems that he many people do feel like he
stole their money essentially, or swindled them, or stole their.
Speaker 4 (45:54):
Work, or even stole their kind of cred in a
way by like being so vocal and like outspoken on
the Internet and kind of hogging the limelight in a way.
Whereas I almost want to it feels to me like
some of these communities would prefer to be a little
more underground.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
Yeah, that's true. Like how much of it is wringling brothers,
You know how much of it is sound and fury? Right.
And it's strange because after Treywick lost his shareholders or
high skidaddled with their stuff, he started going really hard
(46:31):
on his employees. He would announce these unrealistic deadlines to
the media, to the public, and then he would pressure
his researchers again, the people doing the work to cut
corners on science to meet these crazy deadlines. It sounds
a little bit like he was impulsively talking for a
reaction in the moment and promising things that couldn't happen.
(46:53):
This is also very common in politicians.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
Yeah, or a purposeful way to put pressure on his employees,
just like put it out there while I said it,
so now we gotta do it.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
This also, this deadline rush and this kind of unsustainable
growth that he was pushing for, makes Lee believe a
suicide is plausible. He says that Aaron was suing a
few friends and media outlets for defamation, but two weeks
before his death on the twenty ninth, he dropped all
(47:25):
of the lawsuits. Then he had a deadline coming up
in a couple of days, one that there was no
way in hell he was going to make. So does
this mean that maybe he hit a wall of burnout
and desperation and decided to quietly take his own life.
If so, that's tough to say because how many people
(47:45):
choose that method of self extermination.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Well, there's, okay, a couple of things really fast. I
gotta point to the fact that ketamine can take you
to that state of euphoria where perhaps if you knew
you were going to die or kill yourself, you would
not experience the pain and terror and horror of passing over.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
Like LSD with Elvis Huxley.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
But it's it's like, yeah, kind of like that where
it's been used before. I believe ketamine itself has been used.
I know several drugs have been in assisted suicide to
let people die without experiencing the existential.
Speaker 4 (48:27):
But he didn't overdose. He didn't There's nothing in his
system that indicated that he took a drug to kill himself.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
He drowned, but perhaps not to overdose, but to die
while on it. I'm just putting it.
Speaker 4 (48:38):
That's interesting. I'm just kind of being Devil's avogat here.
It's interesting concept. I would lean much more towards an
accidental drowning that's while intoxicated.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
I think that's that's where the story seems to lead us.
You know, right now people still believe that there was
something greater at play. Again, the primary thing is that
if if a large private or governmental organization was going
to remove someone from the picture for this kind of
(49:09):
genetic manipulation, it's far more likely that they would remove
the people actually doing the manipulation, actually doing the research.
They wouldn't They wouldn't need to get rid of someone
who was more of a networker and publicity person. They
would need to get rid of the scientists. And that's
(49:29):
where we're at with this story. We would love to
hear if you're listening and you're part of the biohacking community,
we'd love to hear your take.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
And I would completely agree with you, Ben, if it
wasn't for that a jar door.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
Yeah, there we go see, because.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
If he was in that sensory deprivation tank and he
drowned in that sensory deprivation tank before it was drained,
who opened that door?
Speaker 1 (49:52):
Is it possible that an employee opened it, found him
dead and said like, I'm not I'm just gonna go.
Speaker 4 (49:58):
Maybe he was just raised in a barn.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Yeah, maybe just sting clothes. But no because the person
who puts him in the tank would have to leave
the room. Yeah, exactly, So maybe they were raised in
a barnet.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (50:08):
That possible. Some part of the story was raised in
a barn.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
It's possible that there's a big barn element that we
have not considered yet.
Speaker 4 (50:16):
A man is dead, you guys, I know, I know
it is.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
It is true. The loss of human life is always
a tragedy, regardless of how how people may or may
not feel about Aaron Treywick. If you think that he
was fighting the good fight and pushing technology forward, you
can agree it's a loss. If you thought, you know,
they was more of a swindler and a credit thief,
(50:41):
then it's still a tragic thing. It's a tragic event
when someone dies. It is important to note if we're
talking about the actual medicine. This is another argument maybe
against the FDA idea. Neither the herpes nor the HIV
treatment actually worked. In fact, the guy who was self
injected to the HIV treatment. His viral load.
Speaker 4 (51:02):
Increased, I believe after the injection, and he went back
on his traditional HIV cocktail right.
Speaker 1 (51:10):
However, people in the community generally agree that love or hate,
like or dislike Aaron Treewick brought much more attention to
the transhumanist cause, even and his opponents are still seeing
bad things about the guy, even if it was just
a cautionary tale about how to not go about doing things.
(51:31):
They had two small addendums that might be of interest.
So right before his death, Aaron Trewick was planning a
crisper trial in Mexico at a place called the International
Biocare Hospital and Wellness Center, and the MIT Technology Review
followed up on this lead. They did a great job
and they found that yes there was a trial. It's
(51:51):
going to be for lung cancer. People had to pay.
Participants had to pay twenty five dollars at first to
have Aaron Trewick I guess evaluate them or interview them
to see if they were a good fit for the trial.
And the clinic confirms that they were in talks. They
did get pretty far along in the process, but they're
not going to go forward with the trial. Now that
Treywick has passed away, So is somebody attempting to stop
(52:14):
that trial specifically?
Speaker 2 (52:16):
Yeah, because it seems like, again to our earlier points,
the company could have continued along with that trial.
Speaker 1 (52:22):
Yeah, that's true, that is true. But you know, maybe
he's the lynchpin. It sounds like he was organizing a
lot of stuff. Here's the last addendum though, you guys
remember recently, I think we had talked about this a
little bit off here, maybe on our Facebook page. Here's
where it gets crazy, shameless plug the story of the
(52:44):
Chinese scientists who claimed to have made the world's first
genetically modified children.
Speaker 4 (52:49):
Yeah, also an ethical quandary, right, because he sort of
followed it actually a similar path as this story that
we're telling today, where he kind of did a lot
of this stuff outside of oversight and then present did
the findings. And I believe a YouTube video of some
kind or some kind of internet stream.
Speaker 1 (53:04):
He made an appearance at the second International Someone on
Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong.
Speaker 4 (53:09):
He did do something though, where he revealed some part
of his research online.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
I think it went viral or somethingbody they recorded him saying, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (53:17):
And I think the people in the room, though the
perspective was largely like pearl clutching and gasping is like, yeah,
what the hell like you can't do that.
Speaker 1 (53:25):
Yeah, especially when you're in a room full of scientists
who are saying, look, we're trying not to scare people.
Bro the here's the thing about that scientist. The story
just broke on December third today as we were he
is missing amid rumors of an arrest. Okay, no one
(53:46):
knows where he is, and they say he was placed
under house arrest in Shinjun after the conference, but his
former workplace says the detention claims are inaccurate. We don't
know where he is.
Speaker 2 (53:59):
Well, is this another episode?
Speaker 1 (54:02):
It very well? Maybe, but it's yeah, it's probably a
story for a different day. You know. Maybe maybe a
science was bad, maybe he got carried away, but I
don't think that's a reason for him to get disappeared.
Speaker 2 (54:13):
Yeah, maybe there's something else going on. Might have to
look into it, all right, So what do you think
you got to write to us? You gotta tell us.
Go on, here's where it gets crazy. Let's have a
discussion about this one. This feels like a good one.
Speaker 4 (54:25):
Facebook.
Speaker 2 (54:26):
It is on Facebook. Ben already plugged it really hard.
Speaker 1 (54:30):
It's a quick Plug's a smooth, smooth slide into a
segue plug.
Speaker 2 (54:36):
So so find us on Facebook or on Twitter where
we're conspiracy stuff on Instagram where a conspiracy stuff show.
If you don't want to do those things, you can
give us a call one eight three three SDD tell
you why DK. That's right, leave a message you might
get on the air. We're gonna have another one of
those pretty soon. We got to do that. And what
(54:58):
else here? We just we just want to have a
discussion about this one. Really, there's a lot of crazy
stuff going on in this in this story, and we
want to see maybe you if you've uncumbered something in
this realm, in this world where Aaron Treywick existed, that
is so murky.
Speaker 1 (55:15):
And what do you think about biohacking in general? Yeah,
that's the thing. So this is an interesting, tangentially related
thing and we'll get out of here before Michigan Control
kills us. Should it be illegal for people to use
performance enhancing drugs or technology in the world of sports?
I asked this because in the old days of baseball,
(55:37):
using a baseball glove was considered unsportsmanlike and cheating.
Speaker 4 (55:41):
Really, yeah, I didn't know that. You're just supposed to
bare knuckle it, Yes, bare knuckle it.
Speaker 2 (55:46):
Do you guys remember in the two thousands when it
was illegal to take steroids. It was a crazy time.
Speaker 1 (55:52):
It's funny.
Speaker 4 (55:52):
That's funny, Matt. I like what you did there. Hey,
if you don't want.
Speaker 2 (55:56):
To and that's the end of this classic episode. If
you have any thought or questions about this episode, you
can get into contact with us in a number of
different ways. One of the best is to give us
a call. Our number is one eight three three st DWYTK.
If you don't want to do that, you can send
us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (56:15):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (56:20):
Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Have you ever wondered what life might be like if you stopped worrying about being wanted, and focused on understanding what you actually want? That was the question Hope Woodard asked herself after a string of situationships inspired her to take a break from sex and dating. She went "boysober," a personal concept that sparked a global movement among women looking to prioritize themselves over men. Now, Hope is looking to expand the ways we explore our relationship to relationships. Taking a bold, unfiltered look into modern love, romance, and self-discovery, Boysober will dive into messy stories about dating, sex, love, friendship, and breaking generational patterns—all with humor, vulnerability, and a fresh perspective.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com